Wednesday, August 20, 2014

August 20 2014 (Moscow) In the latest act of solidarity with Ukraine in Russia, a group of people have apparently scaled the heights of one of Moscow’s iconic Stalin-era skyscrapers, hoisted a Ukrainian flag over it, and painted the Soviet star at its peak yellow and blue. The incident took place under cover of darkness in the early morning hours of August 20 at a massive 32-floor elite apartment building on the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment in downtown Moscow in the vicinity of both the Kremlin and the Federal Security Service headquarters. It is not yet clear who was behind the stunt, although police have reportedly arrested four young Russians with climbing gear, all of them believed to be residents of Moscow and the surrounding region. To hoist the flag and paint the star, the climbers presumably would have had to scale the 176-meter building -- or find another way to reach its peak. An unidentified Moscow police official told the Interfax news agencythat the group used "an internal staircase" to reach the top floor of the building and then used "special equipment" to reach its spire. A video posted by various Russian media purports to show one of the pranksters parachuting down from the height of the Stalin-era building after daybreak.

Read full article at http://www.rferl.org/content/moscow-ukraine-vandals-skyscraper/26540814.html